It seems that few days pass that I don't come upon some article or TV/web news report on topics relating to my techno-thriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH (Playing God with Body, Soul and Bio-tech). Here are a few examples of what's turned up recently:
Example: about a week ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a short piece by Daniel Akst, "Tissue that's fit to print" on some new work at Harvard (and a book describing that work) on the subject of using 3-D printing to create layers of tissue based on human cells. The difficulty, until this work, has been in printing a vascular system to nourish the new tissue.
Another example: yesterday I was reading through Bloomberg Business Week (March 24-31, 2014) and came on Caroline Winter's article "Printing Medicine" on Andrew Hessel and his work at Autodesk, where theyare designing software that may help bring about cures for cancer . . . and who knows what beyond. Part of the work is done in conjunctioin with a startup named Organovo, which "uses bioprinting technology to manufacture human tissues" (see paragraph above).
Sorry, at this point I am unable to find the online link to the article (I read it in my old-fashioned print copy!) but I expect it will be up on Google or Bing before long.
BUT as I looked for it via Google and "printing medicine + bloomberg," I came upon not only pages upon pages of relevant articles, but particularly this one from a month or so ago, further making my opening point. This, from Bloomberg (that's only Bloomberg, not Bloomberg Business Week), I came on this article: "3-D technology may someday print up new livers: health.)
I'm running short of time at the moment, but plan in another post here to make the link between my technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, and how it integrates much of this new medical technology. (If I may modestly say so, the early drafts of REMEDY had concepts that pre-figured what we're reading now! And there is still stuff in REMEDY that is way ahead of the curves of bio-tech, human stem-cell technology, the mystery of consciousness, neuroscience, tissue engineering , synthetic biology, regeneratiove medicine, the quest for immortality-- and the ethical and legal implications of putting all those pieces together.